Where I live in Northern CA there is a huge Russian-speaking community, and I am so happy that both my kids and I are lucky to be exposed to Russian a lot.
Recently it dawned on me that out of the people I know who speak Russian so many are not actually FROM Russia, although most are from the former USSR.
What is Russian Diaspora? About 30 million people who speak Russian live outside of Russian Federation. The largest Russian speaking communities are found in the US, Germany, and Israel.
This led me to look up: How many Russian-speaking people actually live in the US? And Wikipedia never disappoints, so here is an article on the topic.
For your information, out of the 316.1 million people living in the US (2013) there are 836,171 Russian speakers (for comparison, there are 36,995,602 of Spanish speaker in the US). And the table below ( taken from Wikipedia) explains why I meet so many Russian-speaking people in CA :
| State | Total | Aged 5–17 | Aged 5–17% |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | 216,468 | 24,531 | 11.30% |
| California | 141,718 | 19,503 | 13.80% |
| Washington | 49,282 | 13,975 | 28.40% |
| New Jersey | 46,094 | 6,636 | 14.40% |
| Illinois | 41,244 | 4,871 | 11.80% |
| Massachusetts | 37,865 | 5,180 | 13.70% |
| Pennsylvania | 35,029 | 5,275 | 15.10% |
| Florida | 31,566 | 4,002 | 12.70% |
| Oregon | 21,443 | 5,622 | 26.20% |
| Maryland | 19,892 | 2,175 | 10.90% |
| Texas | 17,310 | 2,108 | 12.20% |
| Ohio | 15,672 | 1,847 | 11.80% |
| Minnesota | 14,427 | 3,104 | 21.50% |
| Virginia | 13,922 | 1,846 | 13.30% |
| Georgia | 13,091 | 2,332 | 17.80% |
| Colorado | 13,090 | 2,228 | 17.00% |
| Michigan | 12,363 | 1,553 | 12.60% |
| Connecticut | 11,457 | 1,496 | 13.10% |
| North Carolina | 9,288 | 1,699 | 18.30% |
| Missouri | 7,831 | 1,566 | 20.00% |
| Arizona | 7,685 | 895 | 11.60% |
| Wisconsin | 6,817 | 770 | 11.30% |
| Indiana | 5,722 | 962 | 16.80% |
| Tennessee | 4,270 | 933 | 21.90% |
| Utah | 4,218 | 730 | 17.30% |
| Alaska | 3,912 | 976 | 24.90% |
| Nevada | 3,808 | 436 | 11.40% |
| South Carolina | 3,806 | 991 | 26.00% |
| Maine | 2,408 | 849 | 35.30% |
| Kentucky | 2,208 | 236 | 10.70% |
| Idaho | 1,966 | 283 | 14.40% |
| Kansas | 1,919 | 288 | 15.00% |
| Oklahoma | 1,774 | 270 | 15.20% |
| Rhode Island | 1,740 | 90 | 5.20% |
| Iowa | 1,683 | 238 | 14.10% |
| Louisiana | 1,576 | 267 | 16.90% |
| New Hampshire | 1,447 | 263 | 18.20% |
| Alabama | 1,437 | 177 | 12.30% |
| District of Columbia | 947 | 48 | 5.10% |
| Montana | 893 | 332 | 37.20% |
| New Mexico | 887 | 109 | 12.30% |
| Hawai’i | 814 | 136 | 16.70% |
| Nebraska | 807 | 60 | 7.40% |
| South Dakota | 762 | 153 | 20.10% |
| Mississippi | 725 | 81 | 11.20% |
| Vermont | 637 | 80 | 12.60% |
| Delaware | 550 | 77 | 14.00% |
| Wyoming | 519 | 130 | 25.00% |
| North Dakota | 429 | 88 | 20.50% |
| Arkansas | 415 | 34 | 8.20% |
| West Virginia | 338 | 47 | 13.90% |
| Total | 836,171 | 122,578 | 14.70% |
But how many countires apart from Russia actually still use Russian as their official Language? According to Wikipedia, only 4: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan. However there are 6 regions where Russian is an official lanaguage. According to Wikipedia, in addition to the above mentioned countries in which Russian is an official language, there are several other countries where Russian, though not official, is spoken by a significant portion of the population. These include:
Armenia, see: Russian language in Armenia- Azerbaijan
- Estonia, see: Russian language in Estonia
- Ukraine, see: Russian language in Ukraine
- Georgia
- Israel, see: Russian language in Israel
- Latvia, see: Russian language in Latvia
- Lithuania
- Moldova, see: Russian language in Moldova
- Mongolia
- Turkmenistan
- Uzbekistan
If you look at the map of the former USSR and the current Russian boarders – it all makes sense. Israel is there because of the large volume of Russian speaking immigrants (see about Russian Diaspora above), I assume.
One of the beautiful and very different from Russia ccountries that uses Russian is Mongolia.
In the last Creative Kids Culture Blog Hop #20 I came across two wonderful articles which helped me learn about Mongolia and it’s food:
Around the World with Pancakes: Mongolian Gambir
After reading about the country I am now curious to know about the Mongolian language too. As far as I understand, the Cyrillic alphabet is used now but the original script for the language is being re-introduced. I see several hours of research about the Mongolian language in my future!
If you are interested in raising a Multicultural child or want to interest your child in other country’s languages, culture, traditions, or food – it’s a great source for such information! Visit Multicultural Kid Blogs – we are a proud member of that wonderful community!
If you are teaching your child Russian and are not actually from Russia, I would love to know where you are from!
Anna Watt
